Starting in February 2017, Lawrence Technological University’s Detroit Center for Design + Technology at Woodward Avenue and Willis Street will launch a new Design Incubator, funded by the Hudson-Webber Foundation.
The new incubator will include four major programs in an effort to expand opportunities in the creative and technology-based industry in Detroit. Programs will include a business development accelerator course, co-working space, a student-run design firm, and a fellowship program open to graduates of accredited art and design schools.
“Designers of the future need to be skilled in design, able to work with diverse clients, and be able to apply knowledge of business and management,” says Karl Daubmann, dean of the LTU College of Art and Design and executive director of the DCDT. “This ambitious outreach component of the DCDT allows us to greatly extend the LTU mission of ‘Theory and Practice’ to the education and training of young designers and architects.”
School officials say the Design Incubator will provide a dynamic, collaborative space for students, as well as community innovators and entrepreneurs. The incubator will be managed by Christopher Stefani, DCDT assistant director.
“The DCDT Design Incubator is going to offer opportunity and a safety net for the growing number of emerging entrepreneurial design and tech startups in Detroit,” Stefani says. “We see the social, economic, and political potential in Detroit with regards to the transdisciplinary practice of these disciplines, and are excited to be able to aid in the positive development of our city, its economy, and its people.”
Lawrence Technological University, which has its main campus in Southfield, is a private university founded in 1932 that offers more than 100 programs from undergraduate degrees through the doctoral level in its Colleges of Architecture and Design, Arts and Sciences, Engineering, and Management.
